Scribe 3.2
Feb 25, 2007 digital media, tools
I’ve been playing with scribe 3.2 recently and I have to say, it has a LOT of potential. I tried to old version back when I was an undergrad but found it very slow and had to use. I couldn’t automatic input my sources – no importo available – the printing didn’t really work for me. It felt heavy and cumbersome. I ended up simply using Word to organize my notes for my undergrad research. I’m now working on my dissertation and need something a little more sophisticated. I have Bookends to handle my secondary bibliography and I created a simple database on FileMaker Pro to input my documents from the archives. Now I need something to bridge the two, something where I can organize all my subject notes – be it from primary or secondary sources. Scribe seems to be the tool I need.
My friend Jen P. has said many good things about it. The new version is much speedier and easy to use. Plus, having FileMaker Pro – which is what was used to design Scribe 3.2 – already means I have more flexibility with Scribe since I can edit some of its features to suit my needs as well as create as many databases with it as I want. I could even design a filter to easily import from my research database into scribe.
Yesterday I discovered two features that can prove very useful. One is the list of keywords. I knew you could add keywords to every source or notecard created and I figured it was just to make it easier to search. And in a way that’s what it does but in a much easier way – it works more like an index. You go to Lists->Keywords and a window with a list of all the keywords you’ve created shows up. You then click on a particular keyword and you end up with a list of all the notes/sources with that keyword. I think this could make the writing process much easier… Here’s some screenshots (don’t pay attention of the keywords I have, I was just testing the software):
Very nifty indeed… Of course, a lot of the fields are more appropriate to modern historians than to those of us pre-modernists but many of them can be adapted nonetheless. Need to play with it more and see…
February 26th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Cool! I’m still liking Scribe too, though I’m glad you’re able to customize it a bit, since it can be a bit clunky.
I hope the move went well, and that you are feeling better about research this week.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Bobby managed to get me a free copy of the current filemaker pro so I’m going to start trying to figure it out over Spring Break! Scribe sounds interesting too, although i’m not sure I’m ready to make the complete leap to having all my notes on the computer.
February 27th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hey Dana,
I would invest on a good FileMaker book. I bought Learn FileMaker Pro by Jonathan Stars and went through a tutorial. Within half an hour I had a working database without ever having created one before and failing completely in creating one using access.
Jen P
I feel better this week but have to say I was pretty tired at the archives today. After two days of moving and not enough sleep last night, I was falling asleep over the microfilm reader. I ended up leaving early… I hope it will be better tomorrow.
Alex